Poms on top? It's just not cricket!

Richard Hinds

ENGLAND is so close to achieving the No. 1 Test ranking, her majesty is rummaging down the back of the royal sofa looking for MBEs. After routing India again, it need only maintain its 2-0 lead in the four Test series to plant the flag of St George on the statistical summit.

So, with Australia edging closer to the relegation zone than the notional world championship, how do we reconcile the old enemy's success?

How to ridicule and belittle their achievement, while consoling ourselves about Australia's sorry plight?

Alas, not easy. Far-fetched as it once might have seemed, finding fault with English cricket right now is like assassinating the Dalai Lama's character - even allowing for His Holiness's appearance on MasterChef.

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There is the blatantly obvious. Raise an eyebrow as Strauss, Trott, Pietersen and Prior walk out and call them South Engfrica.

But apply the same standard to Australian Olympic teams and other sports in which we have been the beneficiary of skilled migration and that taunt falls flatter than a sumo wrestler's mattress.

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We might suggest the Indians now play Test cricket out of contractual obligation and are merely moonlighting in creams from their real jobs as one-day betting propositions and Twenty20 mercenaries. We might venture that a chain-smoking asthmatic could have blown down India's house of straw.

But to claim England is world No. 1 by default would prompt an uncomfortable glance in the mirror.

If England is merely filling a gap between the great Australian team that once held the title and the next true giant, how poor must Australia be to have plunged to mid-table mediocrity? Besides, with India to tour next summer, it might be best to hold our tongues until we find out if our patchwork crew is capable of exploiting the subcontinent's flimsy resolve.

The most optimistic Australian booster might argue that England's pre-eminence is merely cyclical.

However, as optimism gives way to impatience, the wheels of the current Australian cycle are turning more like those of a postie on a work-to-rule than that of Cadel Evans. So slowly that you can't help remember, with some dread, the apparently ''cyclical'' decline of the West Indies.

No, as much as we would like to dismiss England's rise to Test cricket's pinnacle as the result of some astrological irregularity, the English stars are aligned. Our only consolation is to revel in past glories and suggest their performances are reminiscent of Australia's bygone days.

At 8 for 124 on the opening day of the second Test at Trent Bridge and with the ball swinging like a wind chime in a hurricane, England was under siege. The subsequent half-century by Stuart Broad was the sort of match-turning performance once expected of Adam Gilchrist or, given Broad then took 6-46 including a hat-trick, Shane Warne. Like Old Australia, England's batting has more depth than Curtly Ambrose's bath tub, meaning a quiet start to the series by Alastair Cook has been inconvenient, not fatal.

Once England teams were unrecognisable from Test to Test, let along series to series. That Eoin Morgan for Paul Collingwood is the only significant change to the team that destroyed Australia here last summer is indicative of their stability. In Australia, meanwhile, if you can spin a bottle top you are a decent chance to wear a baggy green.

Which is not to argue this English team would be any match for Australia's great Taylor/Waugh era line-up. Merely that it has the essential ingredients.

Talent, stability, depth, strong leadership and a ruthlessness that moved captain Strauss to declare, even before the No. 1 ranking is achieved, that his team is set on world domination.

Maddeningly, there is not only much to respect about England, there is also little to dislike. The swaggering Pietersen, obviously, is a pantomime villain. But Warne's presence in the commentary box during the current series surely confines an Australian throwing stones at Pietersen to a very fragile glasshouse. Besides, when Pietersen stands to attention and strokes the ball down the ground with Haydenesque brutality, it is hard not to applaud.

So let's say it before it becomes official and a nation that once condemned Australians for their gloating parades the conquering heroes through Trafalgar Square. Uh-hum. England - choke-splutter. Best team in the - errr-hummmm - world.